


Taisen

by Jen425



Series: A Hundred Heroes Welcome You Home [65]
Category: Kamen Rider - All Media Types, Kamen Rider Decade, Tokusatsu
Genre: F/M, Happy Ending With An Angst, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Multi, Post-Canon, yes that tag is backwards on purpose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:27:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28476171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jen425/pseuds/Jen425
Summary: After the war, what a concept
Relationships: Hikari Natsumi/Kadoya Tsukasa/Kaitou Daiki/Onodera Yuusuke
Series: A Hundred Heroes Welcome You Home [65]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1782238
Comments: 6
Kudos: 11
Collections: Bulletproof 20/21





	Taisen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AnnabelleVeal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnabelleVeal/gifts).



> After the war is such a deliciously fun prompt when my favorite character has been through three “wars”.

After the war… Tsukasa almost laughs. There is no after the war, not for him. Always something new.

The first time, he supposes. The first time had been joyous. He’s gone in knowing that the Rider War ended when he killed everyone and an outsider stepped in to kill him. And yet they’d saved him, Natsumi and Yuusuke and Daiki.

Brought him back, and he’d been so happy. He loved them so much, and they’d found a way to love him back enough to revive him, even if he’s tried to make them hate him.

(Necessary evils. He’ll grow to hate that phrase the more he uses it.)

He remembers what it was like after that. A victory tour in the day, almost, visiting the friends they’d made.

(Finding out Takeru’s world had merged with the Riders, he would discover later.)

At night, exploration. Kisses in the dark where he couldn’t meet Daiki’s eyes, for both their sake, where he could pretend he didn’t know why Natsumi’s had always went to his stomach, for her sake, where he could feel the heat of Yuusuke’s touch without eyes closing to show the image of a card, the pain at necessity.

(Nightmares awoken by enough strong and comforting arms to be bearable.)

A happy ending…

  
  
  


After the war, until the next one came.

  
  
  


They thought to use him, because he’d just lost Natsumi and Yuusuke. As if he, Kadoya Tsukasa, would not see them using his own story against him.

Super Sentai would leave all Kamen Riders dead, they cannot coexist.

Tsukasa thinks about a twisted monster, a parody of a Rider, and then he thinks about a card in his deck.

He has nothing left at the Studio. He goes alone again.

Afterwards, it’s still the studio, but now empty, a bed too large for one and ghosts in the walls, memories of before in photographs.

It’s still limbs tangled in his, eyes not meeting in the dark, but now it’s a twisted form of comfort. How does one live with just their past?

Tsukasa certainly can’t. He's as close as he can be to Daiki and still wonders, wonders if he could ever say “I’m sorry”.

But not like this.

Card returned to him, villains defeated, but he already knew that even a staged war leaves scars.

(It’s still nightmares, but now there’s no one else there when he opens his eyes.)

(It’s still traveling, but these days he’s taken to not visiting his friends unless required of him.)

  
  
  


By the time the war against the Showa Riders arrives, it’s old hat. There’s no choice but to play along in some fashion, even if other Riders fight it. They aren’t as used to this, he supposes. The planning, the way you have to act.

It’s killing him, though. It kills him when his proximity allows the Kuuga beside him to access Yuusuke’s form. It kills him every time he sees Gaim move in just the right way.

(They aren’t Yuusuke and Natsumi. He’s not unaware of that, but parallels hurt.)

(Occasionally, he almost thinks he can see Natsumi besides Gaim from the corner of his eye.)

It’s afterwards, and despite everything, that things remain the same yet different.

Curled together, but they ignore each other’s nightmares. Forgiveness but not enough for either of them.

Tsukasa wonders what, if anything, would have changed if the others lived.

He pulls the backdrop back alongside someone else for the first time in years and decides wondering about time is useless.

(The one time his powers can’t reach by wandering through a veil: his own, and thus theirs.)

In the day, Daiki leaves. Tsukasa let’s him.

Maybe things will get better, he considers. Maybe this time there won’t be another war.

  
  
  


(Zi-O’s enemies change the World of Heroes, and he knows how the story goes.)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
